Your American Parent Died in Israel: The IRS Still Expects a Final Return by April 15, the Refund Waits for a Form the Israeli Succession Order Does Not Satisfy, and One Israeli Heir Is Enough to Give the Estate a Return of Its Own

This is orientation, not legal or tax advice. It maps what exists and the questions to take to a licensed professional. It does not tell you what to do about your own estate or taxes.

A father dies in Ra'anana in February 2026, at 81. He left Cleveland in 1998 and kept his American citizenship. US Social Security landed in his Israeli account every month, an IRA in Ohio sent him a distribution each January, and every spring a preparer in Jerusalem filed his Form 1040. His three children were born in Israel. The eldest has an American passport she last used in 2011; her two brothers never applied for one. In March the preparer calls with a question none of them expected: who is signing the 2025 return, and who should the refund be made out to?

In Beit Shemesh a second family is two years further along. The mother, a US citizen from birth, died in 2024. Nobody filed anything in America after that, because nobody thought of it. The apartment sold this summer, the Israeli succession order did its work, and the buyer's lawyer asked for nothing American. Then a son-in-law's accountant in New Jersey asked, in passing, where the mother's final return was and whether the estate had ever been given a tax number.

Both families have met the same fact. The United States taxes its citizens wherever they live, and it does not stop asking at the border or at the grave. The year an American dies, the IRS expects one more return in that person's name, and usually a return from the estate as well. Every rule on the American side was written with an executor in Ohio in mind, and the first job for a family in Israel is to translate them.

The return nobody in Israel knew was due

IRS Publication 559, the guide for survivors and executors, puts the duty in one sentence: the personal representative must file the decedent's final income tax return for the year of death, and any returns not filed for preceding years. The final return runs from January 1 to the date of death and is due on April 15 of the following year, whatever month the death fell in. If the person died early in the year, before the previous year's return was filed, that previous year is still owed as an ordinary return on its ordinary date. The publication's own example is a death on March 21, 2025: the 2024 return is due April 15, 2025, and the final return, covering January 1 to March 21, 2025, is due April 15, 2026. The Ra'anana family therefore owes two returns, one in April 2026 and one in April 2027, not one.

"Personal representative" is a wider term than it sounds. For this purpose the IRS means the executor, the administrator, or anyone who is in charge of the decedent's property. If a court has appointed someone, that person signs. If not, and there is a surviving spouse filing jointly, the spouse signs and writes "Filing as surviving spouse." If there is neither, the person in charge of the property files and signs as personal representative. The word DECEASED, the name and the date of death go across the top, and the Jerusalem preparer can file it electronically as before.

What goes on it is the income up to the day of death: the January IRA distribution, interest and dividends, the Israeli pension for those weeks. US Social Security paid to a resident of Israel is exempt from tax in both countries under Article 21 of the US-Israel income tax treaty, and the saving clause does not override that article, as the survivors' pension page explains. The Israeli pension and the IRA distribution are not exempt; they go on the return, and Israeli tax paid on the taxable income is claimed as a credit on Form 1116, the way it was every other year. Funeral costs do not go on this return. Medical bills can, under a rule in Publication 559 that lets the estate elect to treat expenses it pays within a year of death as paid by the decedent.

Two points on the deadline. The automatic two-month extension to June 15 that Americans abroad rely on is written for a living taxpayer whose home is outside the United States on the due date; Publication 559 says only that a personal representative may obtain an extension on the decedent's behalf. The cautious reading is to file Form 4868 by April 15 if the return will not be ready. And a return has to be filed to get a refund even where none would otherwise be required. That is the Ra'anana family's case: the IRA custodian withheld tax on the January distribution, as custodians generally do on money sent abroad, and the only way to get it back is a return.

The refund, and the form Israel has no word for

A refund due to a dead taxpayer is not paid to whoever happens to file. The IRS needs to know whom it is paying, and Form 1310, Statement of Person Claiming Refund Due a Deceased Taxpayer, is how it asks. The form is not needed in two cases: a surviving spouse filing a joint return with the decedent, and a court-appointed or certified personal representative who attaches a copy of the court certificate of appointment to the original return. Publication 559 is blunt about what does not count: a power of attorney or a copy of the will is not acceptable evidence of appointment.

This is where the Israeli paperwork and the American form talk past each other. An Israeli succession order, the tzav yerusha from the Registrar of Inheritance Affairs that the succession-order page covers, declares who the heirs are and in what shares. It appoints nobody. A probate order does the same for a will. The document the IRS is describing is the appointment of an estate administrator, a mnahel izbon, which the Registrar or the Family Court makes separately and which the mnahel izbon page explains. A family that has one has a court certificate, and a certified translation of it goes in with the return. A family that has only the succession order does not, and the heir who files is in the third box on Form 1310.

That box, line C, opens Part II: three questions written for a death in Ohio. Did the decedent leave a will. Has a court appointed a personal representative, and if not, will one be appointed; if the answer to either is yes, the IRS says the representative must be the one to claim. And then: as the person claiming the refund, will you pay out the refund according to the laws of the state where the decedent was a legal resident. The decedent's legal residence was Israel. The honest answer is that the money will be distributed as the succession order directs, and a preparer who handles cross-border estates knows how to put that on the form. If the answer given is no, the form says no refund is made until a court certificate or other evidence of entitlement is submitted.

The form also asks for the claimant's own Social Security number; its privacy notice says section 6109 of the Code requires it. The Ra'anana daughter with the expired passport has one. If her brothers are not US citizens they do not, and a non-US heir who will be the claimant applies for an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number on Form W-7 before the refund can be claimed in her name. The preparer should raise this in March, not in April.

Then there is the question of where the money goes. Since September 30, 2025, under Executive Order 14247, the IRS has been phasing out paper refund checks for individuals, and its direct-deposit system pays only into accounts at US banks. The IRS's own fact sheet on the order, FS-2026-02 of January 27, 2026, says that refunds to deceased persons are the exception for now: the IRS still issues paper checks to decedent accounts and will publish guidance before that changes. So the refund arrives as a check, in the claimant's name, at the address on Form 1310, which can be in Israel; the form has instructions for a foreign address. Before filing, ask the Israeli bank whether it accepts a US Treasury check for collection, what it charges, and how long it holds the money. A relative's US account is not a shortcut: the check carries the claimant's name, and only the claimant's bank can take it.

One Israeli heir is enough to give the estate a return of its own

The day the father died, the IRS began treating his property as a separate taxpayer. The estate has its own return, Form 1041, and the first thing Publication 559 tells a personal representative to do is apply for an Employer Identification Number for the estate, online or on Form SS-4, and then file Form 56 to tell the IRS who is acting for it. Interest, dividends and IRA money paid after the date of death belong to the estate's return, not the final 1040, and the brokerage and the IRA custodian need the estate's EIN so that their Forms 1099 say so.

The trigger for the return is low. The Form 1041 instructions require a domestic estate to file if it has gross income of $600 or more for the year, or if it has a beneficiary who is a nonresident alien. The second trigger has no dollar figure. If one of the three children is not a US person and the estate earned anything at all after the death, a return is due. Publication 559 adds that where a beneficiary is a nonresident alien, the personal representative has duties as a withholding agent under Publication 515 on US-source income paid out to that heir.

There is a harder question underneath, and it belongs to the professional, not this page. Section 7701(a)(31)(A) of the Code defines a foreign estate by its tax result: an estate whose income from outside the United States, not connected with a US business, is not taxed by the United States. No regulation draws the line. An estate of an American that is administered in Israel by Israeli heirs, with the apartment and the bank accounts in Israel, may be a foreign estate for income tax purposes even though the decedent was a citizen. If it is, the Form 1041 instructions say the fiduciary files Form 1040-NR for the estate instead, on US-source income only. Either way the IRS expects a return from the estate and a number on its correspondence. What it does not expect is silence, which is what the Beit Shemesh family has given it for two years.

The heirs who are Americans without knowing it

Before any of these forms is filled in, the family has to count its citizens. Under 8 USC 1401, a child born outside the United States is a citizen at birth if both parents were citizens and one had lived in the United States, or, for a birth after 1986, if one parent was a citizen and had been physically present in the United States for five years before the birth, two of them after age 14. Citizenship arrives at birth. It does not wait for a consular report or a passport. The Ra'anana sons who never applied for one may be exactly as American as their sister.

That matters twice. For the estate's return, a child who is a US citizen is not a nonresident alien beneficiary. For the child himself, the IRS's position for citizens abroad is that they file US returns on worldwide income above the filing threshold wherever they live. The inheritance is not income; section 102 of the Code keeps bequests out of gross income. What the inheritance earns is: the rent from the apartment, which the rental page covers, the interest in the Israeli account, which the FBAR page covers, and the Israeli fund units that the PFIC page warns about. A son who learns in March that he is an American with an inherited apartment has two sets of questions for the professional, his father's and his own.

The report that outlives him

The FBAR, FinCEN Form 114, is due from every US person whose foreign accounts together exceeded $10,000 at any time in the year, and the regulation's definition of a US person includes an estate. The father's final-year FBAR covers his Israeli bank accounts, his keren hishtalmut and anything else in his name through the date of death. It is due April 15 with an automatic extension to October 15, and the personal representative files it. If the estate then holds Israeli accounts under its own number, the estate files one of its own.

A federal court has said what happens when this is skipped. In United States v. Park, decided in the Northern District of Illinois in 2019, the government sought a penalty of about $3.5 million, half the balance of unreported accounts, for a 2008 FBAR the account holder had not filed. He died in 2012 and the penalty was assessed in 2014. The family argued that a penalty could not be assessed against a dead man. The court held that the liability attached on the day the FBAR was due, June 30, 2009, that it survived his death, and that it could be collected from the estate. Form 8938 belongs on the final 1040 for the same accounts, at the higher thresholds that apply to people living abroad.

Form 706, which almost no one in Israel will owe and some widows need anyway

The estate tax return of a US citizen counts everything he owned, the Ra'anana apartment included, but the IRS filing threshold for a death in 2026 is $15,000,000, and the estate of a retired teacher from Cleveland is not near it. The return is due nine months after death. There are two reasons to look anyway. Lifetime gifts above the annual exclusion count toward the threshold. And a surviving spouse can inherit the unused exclusion, the portability election, only if Form 706 is filed, which the estate-tax page covers together with the problem of a spouse who is not a citizen.

What Israel wants at the same time

Israel has had no inheritance tax since 1981, and nothing on this page changes that. What Israel does want is the deceased's own final return and, often, a refund; the Israeli refund page covers the six-year rule and the form that tells the Tax Authority who the heirs are. Israeli tax paid on the final-year income feeds the Form 1116 credit on the American side. The succession order, which the American forms cannot replace, is still the document that unlocks everything in Israel, and the probate page covers the Registrar's process.

One American tool is closed to an Israeli representative. Publication 559 lets an executor ask for discharge from personal liability on Form 5495, but only an executor appointed and acting within the United States. A request for prompt assessment on Form 4810, which shortens the IRS's window to 18 months, is open to any personal representative and is worth asking about before the estate is distributed, because the publication also says a representative who pays other debts before the IRS can be personally liable for the tax.

The order to do things in

Find out whether returns were being filed, and by whom. If a preparer exists, call them. If nobody filed for years, that is the first thing the professional sorts out, before any form.

Decide who the IRS will see. An appointed estate administrator with a translated appointment order is a court-appointed representative. A family with only a succession order has a line C claimant, who needs a Social Security number or an ITIN.

Count the citizens among the heirs. It changes the estate's return and each heir's own.

Get an EIN for the estate and file Form 56. Give the EIN to the IRA custodian and the brokerage.

Put four dates on the calendar: April 15 after the year of death for the final 1040 and the FBAR, with Form 4868 if the return will be late; nine months after death for Form 706 if it applies; the fifteenth day of the fourth month after the estate's year-end for Form 1041 or Form 1040-NR.

Settle the refund's route before filing: the name on the check, the address, and which bank will take it.

Run the Israeli side in parallel. It does not wait for the IRS.

Orientation only, not legal or tax advice. Three agencies' forms, two countries' calendars and a family whose citizenship may be uncertain is a cross-border professional's work, and an hour of it before April is cheap.